


Deatonese to Werewolf to English

by triggeringthehealing (froggydarren)



Series: FullmoonFiclet Entries [31]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Werewolf Pack Rituals, minor mention of knotting (it's really just Stiles being curious), werewolf pack secrets hidden in unexpected places
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-06 00:44:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6730483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/froggydarren/pseuds/triggeringthehealing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the pack asks Deaton for help with strengthening the pack bonds before a meeting with a neighbouring pack, they leave with more questions than answers. Stiles latches on to the scraps of information that they did get, and he dives right into research on pack binding rituals. He knows though that only a born werewolf is likely to have all the answers, he just doesn't think Derek is going to be much help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deatonese to Werewolf to English

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Full Moon Ficlet](http://fullmoon-ficlet.livejournal.com/392127.html) challenge on Livejournal - prompt #170: Arcane

“Seriously, does anyone  _ ever _ understand what he’s talking about?” Stiles grumbled as the pack drove from Deaton’s to Derek’s loft. “I wonder if there’s a dictionary that would translate Deatonese to English. Maybe we should start writing one. Then again, I ask, is there  _ anyone _ in here who knows what he meant? Ever?” 

Scott shrugged from the passenger seat of Roscoe, and when Stiles glanced at Isaac and Allison in the back seat, they were both shaking their heads. 

“Yeah, didn’t think so,” Stiles said. “I mean, I got that he was talking about binding rituals, and the Hales, and arcane traditions that only born wolves were privy to. But unless he was talking about  _ mating _ rituals, then I don’t even know where to start with that.”

The last words fell out of his mouth as he was stumbling out of the Jeep in the parking lot by Derek’s building. The Camaro pulled up next to Roscoe moments earlier, and Stiles almost crashed into Erica as she slid out of the back seat -- a lot more gracefully than Stiles’ exit out of his Jeep was -- and smirked at him. 

“Deaton might as well have been talking about  _ knotting _ for all the sense that he made,” Stiles mumbled, and immediately heard the choking on air coming from all the werewolves around him. “That’s not a thing, is it? I mean, it is if I was to believe what the internet says, but there’s a lot of bullshit on there…”

“Shut up, Stiles,” Derek growled as he glanced over his shoulder. 

“Wait, you’d know best,” Stiles immediately perked up, already familiar with the tone -- it said that Derek knew more than anyone else in the pack -- and his curiosity sprang into action. “I mean, I’m pretty sure Scotty would have freaked out if it happened to him, and especially early on that would have meant that I’d know.” There was a splutter of protest behind Stiles’ back, but Stiles ignored Scott’s weak complaints. 

“Shut. Up.” 

Derek’s tone was curt, the words bitten off almost in anger. Almost, Stiles knew, recognised the frustrated and exasperated tone for what it was -- Stiles getting a little too close to the truth with his questions, and Derek not wanting to deal with any of it. 

“Let it go, Stiles,” Isaac said softly, his hand landing on Stiles’ shoulder. 

Figuring that Isaac sensed Derek’s mood a little better than the others -- Erica was smirking, Boyd looked unimpressed, Scott was still cringing -- Stiles dropped the topic, and followed the others into the loft to resume the pack meeting that had started at Deaton’s. No one mentioned the vet’s unhelpful comments, and they eased back into strategy planning for the upcoming meeting with Satomi’s pack. 

The thing was, Stiles’ mind wasn’t built to let things go, not when they were mysterious and not resolved. To him, deciphering Deaton’s words was a challenge that needed to be met, a question in need of an answer. So when the pack scattered to their homes, Stiles did what he always did best: he booted up his laptop the moment he got to his room, and started researching. The internet didn’t  _ always _ have all the answers, but more often than not it contained information that led him in the right direction at least. He was lost enough in the words on the screen that he didn’t notice anything around him, including the door to his room opening. 

“You’re not going to find it,” Derek said from the doorway, making Stiles jump a little in his chair. 

“What?” 

His brain still halfway processing what he was reading, Stiles didn’t even feel embarrassed at losing his eloquence. Derek was leaning against the doorframe, his expression still the same as earlier, eyebrows scrunched into a frown. 

“The traditions were strictly word-of-mouth, for within the packs only,” Derek said quietly, like remembering was painful. “There wasn’t supposed to be a record of it, and to the best of my knowledge, there isn’t. Not even humans in packs knew, most of the time.” 

Stiles opened his mouth, but the words froze on his tongue, and he closed it again. He didn’t know what to ask first: was Derek going to tell him, was Deaton talking about mates, who told Derek… None of the questions felt appropriate when Derek looked like he was breaking at the memories. 

“Okay,” Stiles whispered, and he reached out to close the laptop. “Okay,” he repeated a little louder, and watched as Derek tore his gaze from the carpet, meeting Stiles’ eyes. 

They both stayed silent for a while, and then Derek pushed himself off the doorframe and walked over to Stiles’ bed, sitting down on the edge. His hands were clenched together as he started speaking, voice low and quiet, only audible because Stiles was only a couple of feet away. 

“I wasn’t even supposed to know about any of it, not yet,” Derek said. “It’s a thing that’s talked about when we turn eighteen, when it becomes relevant. I think Peter almost told me when Paige… before…” Derek’s voice broke on the girl’s name, and Stiles’ fingers twitched as he felt the need to reach out. 

He didn’t though, and listened as Derek talked about how he had overheard the conversation shortly after Paige had died, when Talia had talked about it with Laura who’d just turned eighteen. He told Stiles about the traditions of welcoming a new pack member who was a partner to a wolf, about full moon rituals that bound the new member to the rest of them. 

“We didn’t do any of it properly, obviously,” Derek finished up, obviously talking about how his pack came to be. “Not in the way it would’ve been done in a functioning pack. Deaton mentioned it because it might make us better, closer.” 

There was more to it, Stiles knew, but Derek wasn’t going to talk about that part yet, and Stiles didn’t want to push too much. They were a thing these days, had something building between them now that the pack was mostly stable and started to settle in as the new Hale pack, but they were still in the early stages that Stiles didn’t want to push through. So instead of questioning Derek, Stiles moved to sit next to him on the bed, and reached to pull one of Derek’s hands out of the grip they had on each other. He laced their fingers together and smiled. 

“Tell me what you know then, and what needs to be done,” Stiles said after a few moments of silence. “Then I’ll do my research magic. I know you said there wasn’t supposed to be a record of it anywhere, but the internet is a wonderful thing, it just might have what we need.” 

Derek’s mouth opened and then closed, his eyes wide in surprise as Stiles tried to convey with his own face how serious he was. 

“There’s another thing…” Derek said, and then paused like he didn’t quite know what it was that he wanted to say. 

“Yeah, I figured,” Stiles smiled softly. “Pack first though, and then whatever else it is.” 

Derek nodded, and slowly, still looking like the words were a little painful, he started talking about the pack binding rituals that he had a vague memory of. Stiles, unwilling to put things down on paper just yet, focused on and tried to memorise every word. His fingers were still laced with Derek’s and he was offering reassuring squeezes as Derek continued talking. 

“Wait, pause,” Stiles interrupted when Derek mentioned a particular part of the tradition, a text that was supposed to be spoken at moonrise. “This sounds familiar,” he said and tugged his hand out of Derek’s, standing up to get his laptop. 

“It can’t, there’s no one in a pack who’d talk… who’d make it public,” Derek said brokenly. “Everyone would get their memories of this taken away if they ever left a pack.” 

“This wasn’t  _ public _ , per se, it wasn’t in any way revealed as legitimate werewolf insider info,” Stiles told him as his fingers danced over the keyboard. “Or well, it is public, but not in the way you’d expect, and not in a place where you’d go looking for genuine information. I mean, there are message boards that I’m pretty sure are actually full of werewolves. I used to go there before,” Stiles waved a hand to imply encompassing everything that happened since the night that Scott had been bitten. “But I’d never have thought… there was just no way it was  _ real _ .” 

He turned the screen towards Derek after he let out a victorious whoop.

“A gaming site? Stiles, why are you…” Derek started, but when he read over the first few lines of a storyline that Stiles had browsed to, his words faded into silence. 

“Yeah, like I said, there was no way this was real,” Stiles shrugged. “I didn’t even think about this game when Scott was bitten, because it was all just fantasy. I guess I should’ve known better.” 

Derek was quiet as his eyes scanned over the text, and he only moved to grab the laptop when Stiles held it closer. While Derek was going through the information on there, and jumped through several side pages, Stiles moved back to the bed. He remembered the game, an obscure one that never gained the popularity that Stiles had thought it should have. Now, watching as Derek’s brows moved depending on whether he looked confused or surprised by what he was reading, Stiles was glad. 

“This is it,” Derek said when he finally looked away from the screen. “I don’t know how this got out, but this all matches up with what I heard back then.” 

“I can work with that,” Stiles said, and he took his laptop from Derek’s hands. 

He was typing furiously, forming questions about the game to the developers in ways that wouldn’t alert anyone to Stiles’ connection to and knowledge of a pack. When he was done, and he clicked the ‘send’ button on the email he composed, he switched back to the storyline of the game. He wondered how much of a coincidence it was that he’d picked that game up before he ever knew werewolves were real, on a whim because it was in the bargain bin. 

“The game never got popular,” he said, partly to himself and partly to Derek, who still looked a little tense, making Stiles assume that the information leak was upsetting. “It’s pretty obscure, and the fact that it even has an entry on here is half because of me, from years ago.” 

Derek shook his head, and then he shrugged, but the relief was palpable, and the way Derek’s shoulders relaxed didn’t get past Stiles’ observation skills. He figured it would need a little more to ease Derek’s worries, and something on the screen caught his eye and gave him a topic change idea. 

“So, anyway, with all this,” he nodded at the screen, “the question I had earlier still stands. Is knotting a thing?” 

The only answer he got was a glare, but Stiles also noticed the way Derek’s ears turned a little darker. Satisfied with the change in mood -- Derek’s glare stopped being frightening or unnerving a long time ago, and the one he was giving Stiles was back in the exasperation range -- he focused back on the pack bonding rituals on his laptop. There would be time to ask Derek about the details of werewolf sex life later. 

**Author's Note:**

>   
> [my tumblr](http://froggydarren.tumblr.com/) || [my sterek fic tumblr](http://triggeringthehealing.tumblr.com/)  
> 


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